It is often difficult for a corporate to justify the costs of website design. There are all sorts of arguments that can be levied against spending money on a website. Some of these are for example that most B2B purchase decisions are not really made through vendors found on the internet. These types of decisions are often made on existing vendor-supplier relationships as well as the ubiquitous 'network'.
However, there are actually some very compelling reasons for a B2B company, or corporate, to spend attention on their website design. Having a website is actually not a nice-to-have or a luxury, or even just case of 'having a presence' or keeping up with the proverbial Jones's.
Let's look at some good reasons why a corporate, or B2B company, should have a website - the main of which is to gain more customers and improve the bottom line:
1.Building trust
This is a very good reason for a corporate or B2B company to have a website. Your website in this case forms part of your corporate branding, in the first place, and through the content and imagery that you publish on the site, conveys a certain message with regards to who you are and what services you offer. If you don't have a website, or if your website is badly designed, your potential customers will definitely have doubts about your standing, stature and trustworthiness. After all, which big, trustworthy company these days do NOT have a website?
2 Generating leads
We have already said that most vendor selection decisions are not based on directly finding a supplier on the Internet, however, you can be certain that the people responsible for vendor selection (especially when looking into new products) might do a quick search in the search engines to look at potential suppliers.
3. Improve your services
You can use your website to improve your services. Use the interactive mechanisms on your website to run surveys and get feedback on your quality of service or general customer satisfaction.
4. Advertise your services and products
If you are looking for cost effective advertising, look no further than a corporate website that is well designed. It can convey much more information than original print advertising such as a company brochure and even better - the information that you publish can always be fresh. If you consider the costs of print advertising, and compare this with the costs of website design there is actually no comparison - your website will win hands down every time.
5 Improve your communication
Communicate with your existing and potential clients through your website by making use of mailing lists and newsletters. You can notify clients of new product releases, special offers and general news of the company. All of these contribute to building relationships and generating more business from existing clients.
Yes, it is sometimes difficult to justify the ROI of a corporate website, since it is more difficult to directly track the relationship between website design costs and customer conversions, but really - can your company afford to be without one?
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